When Cingular was formed and Bellsouth And SBC got together I can remember how obtuse, aggressive, bullying, and aggressive many of the SBC people were. All they could do was see a nail and hammer and just wack and pound away at things. Not much thought process just bang your heads against walls until you plowed through it. And the most mesmerizing thing about it was the pride they took in being stupid SBC soldiers. Like hey we chopped down the entire forest when only a 6 foot wide path was necessary. At this point what talent would be attracted to ATT aside from incompetent yes men?
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Same experience here. We had a former PacTel manager come in with metrics and micromanagement and deep suspicions of everyone who was remote, which for him was 80% of the group. Especially suspicious of the VOs, because as he told it a senior legacy Pactel exec was caught on the golf course during working hours soon after Whitacre took over. Ed used what should have been an employee incident report and dismissal as a policy forming reason to quash remote work.
Since SBC aquired BLS, I have worked for both Leg T and Leg S supervisors. The Leg S supervisor have all su-ked, and several were unethical to the point that I had to get HR and/or Accounting involved to get them to do the right thing. I never had to deal with something like that at BLS or with the Leg T bosses.
@bb totally fu--ing agree with you.
I was Cingular, management. It was a fun place to work then. The acquisition of AT&T Wireless (not the dying phone company AT&T) posed some challenges. There weas some mistrust, and a bit of a Blue V Orange thing. But it still wasn't that bad. It wasn't until the good old boys from the dying Telco came in from T and started saying things like "we've been doing this for 100 years..." and started systematically ruining a pretty efficient business model and trying to turn it into Ma Bell with their bureaucracy and antiquated systems that things really started going downhill. And it hasn't really stopped since.
Cingular and mobility kept them afloat and if it were not for the orange jack, the name woulda been forgotten. Those blue ways have destroyed the company and wasted money on frivolous ventures, like dtv.
It is impossible for a company with a culture this toxic not to be hiding significant fraud and illegal activity. This will end like Worldcom.
They can’t Hide their wildly Toxic work environment, falsified metrics and rule-by-Fear tactics from the rest of the world anymore, too many employees and ex-employees are speaking up. Their horrible reputation is now all over the internet.